Sliding Toward an Uncivil War
When I first set foot in Baghdad with the 101st Airborne Division in April 2003, the Iraqis I met on the streets were offended when I asked if they were Shiite or Sunni, Arab or Kurd. When I visited last December, the question was no longer verboten. Nor was it necessary; religion and ethnicity were clear from the start of every conversation.
The bombing of Samarra's Askariya mosque last Wednesday pulverized the shrine's golden dome and perhaps what remained of a national secular identity. Knowing the attack was calculated to set off a sectarian blood bath, Shiite leaders called for peaceful protests. Nevertheless, around the country there were retaliatory attacks on Sunni mosques and citizens. Hundreds were killed. In response, the most important Sunni parliamentary bloc walked out of negotiations on forming a new Shiite-dominated government. By Friday, a rare daytime curfew restored a measure of calm, at least putting off further escalation of the violence.
American military leaders saw the handiwork of Abu Musab Zarqawi, the violent Sunni extremist. "Zarqawi's target is to strip away this notion of Iraqi nationalism," Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, deputy strategy director for U.S. Central Command, told me on the day of the bombing. "If he can wipe away this notion, as was done in Yugoslavia, then people would revert to the next tier: 'I am a Sunni, a Shia, or a Kurd.'"
Today, the war in Iraq looks less like resistance against a foreign army and more like a clash of creed, class, and ethnicity. While 2006 has seen spectacular bombings aimed at Shiite civilians and death squads targeting Sunnis, the number of Americans wounded in action fell from 413 in December to 280 in January--the lowest monthly count in two years.
American diplomats argue the logic that everyone loses if Iraq slides into a full-blown civil war and have used the destruction of the golden dome to press even harder for a unity government. So while Zarqawi and others work to rend the Iraqi identity, the question is, can it be stitched back together?
This story appears in the March 6, 2006 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.
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